what causes the most slowdown when the computer ai is "thinking"?

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i played unmodded cm on my laptop when i went home for christmas. the computer seemed to process a little faster than my normal computer, a more powerful desktop. was it my imagination? does modded textures have any bearing on how fast the blue bar advances during turn processing?

also, is it me or is the ai a little more agressive in the original version too?

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I know for me slow down occurs when tanks have a go at each other. To the point where I can tell my opponent to the exact second when his (or more likely mine) tank buys it. (Of course your opponent then accuses you of cheating ) How tank combat differs from regular infantry combat I'm nor sure. Perhaps the TacAI has a bit more work to do with LOS and 'do I stay or run' thought process.

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Resolving combat takes the most computing power. When you play a PBEM game the early files are rather small, but once the shooting starts the files get bigger. Near the end when all hell is breaking loose the files are comparativly huge because of the all the shooting going on.

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BTS has said LOS checks are a real eater of CPU time, which is why some desirable features weren't put into the game (ex: moving tanks providing cover for grunts moving right behind them). This being the case, I would imagine that moving a lot of units over cluttered and/or hilly terrain, where their LOSes would change a lot during the course of a turn, would tend to bog the blue bar down. This of course would get even worse when units come into contact.

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BTS has also said that the tacAI eats up a lot of thinking times. Modded textures shouldn't make a difference at all.

This means that if you are advancing to contact in a pbem, and it's your turn to compute the turn, that you can observe the progress of the bar and know if you ran into trouble or not, then go back and replot the turn to be more cautious. BTS doesn't seem to care about this potential for cheating though.

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The movement of any AFVs seems to make the filesize go way up. This is even if your it doesn't see the enemy. I noticed this in my last pbem...I didn't move a vehicle until turn 10+, and all of the sudden the sizes went up from 12K to 150K+. Once my tanks were in his LOS, it went up to 300+.

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This means that if you are advancing to contact in a pbem, and it's your turn to compute the turn, that you can observe the progress of the bar and know if you ran into trouble or not, then go back and replot the turn to be more cautious. BTS doesn't seem to care about this potential for cheating though.<hr></blockquote>

Look on the bright side, your opponent could only do such a dishonorable thing once every two moves. So in theory, you could plan for it.

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I look on the even brighter side of assuming my opponent simply wouldn't do it at all, but I see your point.<hr></blockquote>

I also assume that. It really wouldn't be a very effective cheat, since it would only work for 1st contacts (prolly only w/ armor too), since in an armor vs. armor battle you wouldn't know *whose* tanks were being hit.